I often tell my friends who are interested in adoption, that to be an adoptive parent you have to have to be a believer in nurture. It's also important for adoptive parents to realize that nurture isn't everything to a person, and that children's genetic heritages will always be a part their make up, but it's also important not to get overly fearful of the genes of strangers.
But these days, "genes" seem to have taken on mythic proportions in popular culture. People seem to think everything about a person is coded somewhere in the DNA. But that's not really how genetics work, as anyone with actual knowledge of the subject will tell you. Some aspects of our identity are more hard-wired than others. Some genes may indicate a tendency towards an effect, but remain inactive until triggered by outside factors.
Until recently, "intelligence" was thought to be largely a genetic matter. Twin studies (research on genetically identical people raised in different environments) for example, indicated that siblings raised apart had very close IQ scores. But new research by Richard E. Nisbitt, author of Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count, has shown that in fact, environment makes for at least 50% of intelligence as measured by IQ testing.
According to Nisbitt: "If you were to average the contribution of genetics to IQ over different social classes, you would probably find 50 percent to be the maximum contribution of genetics."
And although Nesbitt finds that "Raising someone in an upper-middle-class environment versus a lower-class environment is worth 12 to 18 points of IQ," it is not the money that gains those points but the tendency of middle-class parents to read to, speak to and "encourage" their children more than other parents. And while expensive does not equate to high quality in education, Nisbitt finds that small class size, low teacher/student ratios, experienced, skilled teachers and up-to-date instructional technology lead to better results for children from any family background. Those things are of course, more likely to be found in more expensive schools.
The upshot of Nesbitt's research is that public schools need to improve in the areas that have proven to make a true difference. Rather than writing off the children of the poor and working classes or, even more insidiously, using genetic "inferiority" as an excuse to ignore their needs, public policy should focus on improving the environmental factors that matter just as much as genes.
Nesbitt explains the twin studies by explaining that even when raised in different adoptive homes, twins adopted at birth at the time of the studies were likely to go to fairly similar families, in terms of social class and access to quality education. Those similarities were enough to give children with identical genetic packages similar outcomes on IQ tests.
IQ tests are, of course, questionable to begin with. They have long been understood by many to be slanted towards people with greater "cultural capital" like basic economic class, social status and education access in the first place. Such a bias, is of course, another reason children from higher socio-economic classes will score better on the tests, leaving another big question hanging in the air.
As an adoptive mother of two bright children from two very underprivileged biological family backgrounds, I find Nesbitt's work intriguing. I only hope that such research will lead to better opportunities for all children and a society in which something as drastic as adoption isn't necessary for poor children to access a decent education.
